Part of the problem is when these guys try to brand themselves. they never do it in a way that makes me think, oh man, what's he going to do next?
Romero couldn't do it, Molyneux couldn't do it, Garriott almost did it to the comicon crowd but didn't do it.. they're not rockstars no matter how desperately they want to be.
Then you go and pick one of the worst monikers in the industry.. oof. You can't go by a name that people don't want to type much less say out loud. Imagine being his assistant.
"Um, Mr. CliffyB, you have a call on.. uhh.. sir.. Mr. CliffyB? Yeah, sorry to interrupt, but you have a call on line two. It's Lord British."
Fuck that.

It really doesn't matter what you think though. It gets them media coverage and investors. Branding yourself is definitely effective and can help you a lot.

I kind of understand why you would want to resurrect UT today. I usually love Blizzard but I just don’t really like Overwatch all that much. It flat out made me heaven back to the days of UT and obviously CliffyB thought there was a market in that nostalgia. But i guess people like me are in the minority or (also like me) getting too old and tired to game as much as we used to and just don’t spend as much cash on games.
But once all is said and done, he may have been an ass but I almost never like seeing a dev go under.

Fortnite's changed this genre. Quake Champions doesn't stand much more of a chance than this one I think, too late to retrofit towards battle royale I'd think. I met Cliffy at a 90's The Frag event once. He was a nice guy with attitude but without airs then, haven't seen or followed him much since but I always had a level of respect for the guy. Good early level designer, highly apt game designer. Might have invented the cover-attached shooter with Gears, not that I like the genre much, but the market sure did for a number of years thereafter.

Not a position of endurance, lead design for videogames. Imo, if you get to make a (Marky) mark you do so mainly because the timing of your ideas was right (luck or otherwise becomes an existential question). You had your finger on the pulse of the times, you knew the right people (Sweeney, duh) and you had the dedication to carry it through, for whatever duration, until the paradigm shifts enough that whatever subsets of your core concepts that still remain are no longer game changers. For better of worse, there are no Édith Piafs of game design, the field evolves too quickly.

Living in the Triangle I have mixed feelings on Cliffy. I have Epic friends who said he was a huge dick. At the same time he has invested in the community by doing some cool stuff, like opening the Raleigh Beer Garden, which has a Guiness World Record for most beer taps at 366! I've followed him on social media and on the one hand he does kind of flash around his money and what he does with it, its also cool to see behind the scenes somewhat. I don't think he deserves all the hate he gets, but I totally understand why he gets the amount of hate he does.

I often wonder if gamers, specifically, are just very fickle or if everyone is fickle but it becomes much more apparent with gamers.

Nah you guys just either weren't there or forgot how much of an asshole he is. Oh he's great in the official capacity in the spotlight. Dude's an asshole underneath plain and simple.

He helped make jazz jack rabbit and the unreal series the only games I considered fun that he's done. He made the over the shoulder camera standard that I give him props for. That's not fickle I remember and my memory is long. Hell he used to post here. How many of ya remember that?

He's the kind of guy that thinks we're fucking crazy for not sucking his dick because he whipped it out there.

__________________
Be the change you want to see in the world.
Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.

I havent bothered to follow most of games hes been involved in since they stopped being my cup of tea but when i met him years ago testing unreal 2, the dude took the time to stop and talk to QA folks while visiting the studio. I mean sit down and shoot the shit and get to know us. Maybe it was all just an act but I never saw any other sorta famous, gave dev/designer person do that in the time i spent at Atari.

I know him. I remember the first time I met him and he introduced himself I said "Yep! I know, it's a pleasure to meet you!" he said "I still like to introduce myself, if I don't people think I'm an asshole. I start to think I'm an asshole."

Yes he has a flamboyant public persona. Yes he drove around in a grotesque green lambo. No he didn't get fired from Epic.

But he is also (mostly) genuine in his love for games, the industry, and the people who play the games. In the time I knew him and all the times he went to Comic-cons and presented at E3s (and I sat around with him in a lot of greenrooms which is actually super boring) he rarely scripted what he said. He'd have bullet points but he rarely needed the teleprompters.

He loves his attention, most people do though some, like Peter Molynoux and Tim Shaffer seem like they can barely tolerate us, but of the fancy pants "names" I've worked with over the course of 20 years in games, Cliff may be the one who was most like a regular gamer living the dream.

At least till Bosskey. I sort of lost track of him after the Gears of War days went by...

It's sad to see him lose this venture and the people lose their jobs but the good ones will go to Epic and the others will land somewhere, I'm sure. Insomniac has offices there as does Red Storm and there's other tech companies in the Triangle for people not great at games development.

Life goes on and Lawbreakers and whatever "me too!" BR clone he was trying to make weren't doing it. Gamers need more these days, or less as minecraft shows us.

Met and talked with him several times in a professional capacity, including in Raleigh. Complete piece of shit. I want you to imagine the most pathetic, insecure kid you knew in 7th grade who tried so laughably hard to be cool (like Seth Green's character in Can't Hardly Wait). Now imagine that kid never growing out of it, like most did by college age, and making it to 27 the same insecure blowhard who bros out and throws devil horns because rock & roll. I wanted to punch this guy the minute I met him and in every interaction since. Fake as all hell, tries way too hard, drips with insecurity, and deserves everything befalling him.

Met and talked with him several times in a professional capacity, including in Raleigh. Complete piece of shit. I want you to imagine the most pathetic, insecure kid you knew in 7th grade who tried so laughably hard to be cool (like Seth Green's character in Can't Hardly Wait). Now imagine that kid never growing out of it, like most did by college age, and making it to 27 the same insecure blowhard who bros out and throws devil horns because rock & roll. I wanted to punch this guy the minute I met him and in every interaction since. Fake as all hell, tries way too hard, drips of insecurity, and deserves everything befalling him.

He was made for G4tv. Remember that abomination? No. Neither does anyone else. And soon CliffyB will be forgotten along with it. (Makes sense he appeared on their shows quite a few times.)